In This Rain (5 page)

Charlie turned to the NYPD guys. “From your point of view?”

Police Commissioner John Finn’s voice was the kind of soft rumble that can be heard over every other sound on a crowded street. “Well, of course,” he said, “if it turns out they’re just accidents— preventable or otherwise— it won’t be NYPD’s territory. Right now, because the Winston woman died and foul play’s still a possibility, we’re investigating. Luis Perez from Bronx Homicide is the lead. He can liaise with DOI’s people.”

Shapiro nodded. He didn’t offer the name of DOI’s lead investigator in return. Why? Charlie wondered, hoping he wasn’t seeing the beginning of a pissing match between Shapiro and Finn.

“Mayor?”

That was Greg Lowry. Charlie turned to him. “Mr. Lowry?”

“Just one thing, Mayor. I’d like DOI to look into the site crews, too.”

“Three Star’s people? It’s a little outside DOI’s jurisdiction. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking, if there’s anything to find, it would be good if everyone saw DOI in on finding it.”

Charlie nodded. “John? You have any objections?”

“No, of course not,” said Finn, though of course he did and of course Charlie knew it. There’d be pissing and moaning at One Police Plaza when Finn sent the order down the line.

“Okay, do it,” Charlie told Lowry. “Stop frowning, Mark. Think outside the box. Your IG just had a good idea and your mandate is whatever I say it is. All right, people.” He stood and peered down the table. The possibilities Shapiro had articulated— three accidents, preventable or otherwise; or sabotage— weren’t new. Charlie had thought of them all, and doubtless so had everyone else. But they’d had to be spoken aloud. They’d had to be on the record.

Now they were.

“This is it,” he said. “We went through bullshit like this three years ago and it almost brought us down. That’s not going to happen again. I have a press conference in four hours and I want to have something to say. I can tell them we’re looking into this tragic death but we’d damn well better be. If there’s anything to find and the Post finds it first, every single one of you can kiss his— or her— ass goodbye.”

Turning his back on the meeting, he strode through the door to his office and pulled it closed behind him.

If there was anything Charlie Barr had down, it was how to make an entrance and an exit.

Heart’s Content

Ann’s voice flared: “Why the hell didn’t you tell me when you were getting out?”

Joe turned to her. The blue of Ann’s eyes was unequal, right a shade darker than left; but unless you were bold enough to stare straight into them— as not many men were— you’d think you’d imagined it. You’d think the oddness was in you, not Ann.

“Shit, Ann,” he said. He sipped his coffee, strong and bitter. “Maybe because I didn’t want you to know?”

“You think that’s okay? After all this?”

All what?

Did she mean the icy moment, three years ago, when— from her— he’d learned about the shoring collapse on the Dolan Construction site and the death of little Ashley Moss: the moment that instantly and forever cut his life into before and after?

Or did she mean the shock of his arrest, the surreality of his trial, the sinking certainty of his conviction?

Or his divorce, uncontested but never for an instant unregretted? The ceaseless edginess, the round-the-clock clamor of the cellblock? The calendar days crossed off, each with a slow, identical line?

Of all that, what could she mean?

*

Joe Cole wasn’t the Buildings Department inspector who’d taken cash to overlook bad shoring, or the Dolan Construction site super who’d paid that bribe. Those men, Larry Manelli and Sonny O’Doul, were also arrested. They were charged and convicted in hasty plea bargains: their lawyers saw the planets aligning. Both were headed for prison as Joe’s trial began.

But they weren’t enough. The public was outraged and the mayor was out for blood. He held a press conference to prove it. Surrounded by Commissioners and introduced, in a rare moment of civic unity, by Manhattan Borough President Edgar Westermann, the mayor spoke.

“City agencies will not continue to show citizens this kind of deadly disrespect! Hard-working”— (read: blue-collar)— “New Yorkers like Antwan Moss”— (read: black)— “have a right to expect their children to be safe walking down the streets! We demand accountability from the private sector— why not from government? Everyone responsible for the criminal tragedy that took the life of little Ashley Moss— whether they work for Dolan Construction, or for a city agency— will be brought to justice. We owe that to New Yorkers, and I promise you, we will deliver.”

Oh, the mayor. Everyone loved the mayor. Joe had watched his rise; he’d even voted for him. A brash, glad-handing former City Council Speaker with a Jackie Gleason accent and an endearingly receding hair-line, Charlie Barr gave it to you straight. He ate street food, spoke plain English, showed up at ribbon-cuttings and funerals in the outer boroughs (where his support was high), and aggressively courted skeptical Latinos and blacks, attending innumerable testimonial dinners, awards ceremonies, and church services. He joked with reporters and made great copy. Running on a platform of disgust with slack and sloppiness, Charlie Barr had declared that New Yorkers deserved better: higher efficiency, lower taxes. Cleaner, safer streets. Fewer rules and regs. He’d promised to cut through the b.s. if they’d just vote for him. Sick of unresponsive, incomprehensible, and self-protective city agencies, New Yorkers did. The newspapers, reviving a tradition that had faded in the reign of Giuliani and died in the days of Bloomberg, called Charlie Barr “Hizzoner.”

And on the subject of the Dolan Construction disaster Hizzoner was furious. “People being what they are, you can’t help but run up against corruption sometimes. That’s why we have the Department of Investigation: so when the system breaks, we can fix it.” He glared into the TV cameras. “People who work at DOI have a heavy responsibility. Am I saying they have to be better than the rest of us? Yes, I am. Is that unfair? You tell me. But I can tell you this: when it looks like DOI’s where the corruption is, I’m shocked and quite frankly outraged.

“We’re pursuing this situation aggressively. We’ll find out just how and why little Ashley Moss died and we will punish those responsible. You’ll see.”

They saw.

Joe Cole had had Buildings Department inspector Larry Manelli in his sights for months. Joe Cole knew Manelli was taking bribes from Sonny O’Doul, site super for Dolan Construction. Joe Cole had been to the Dolan jobsite many times. Joe Cole was a licensed engineer and an experienced investigator; surely he recognized bad shoring when he saw it. Yet Joe Cole had done nothing. “Mr. Cole’s defense?” asked the prosecutor rhetorically at Joe’s trial (though the real trial had been in the newspapers and the verdict was long in). The rhetorical answer: “He was gathering more evidence! Making a stronger case! Mr. Cole claims he was going to present his evidence to his Inspector General ‘very soon.’ Well, you have in front of you the case file Mr. Cole developed. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s two inches thick! How much more evidence would an honest man have to gather? How much stronger would the case have to be before a conscientious investigator blew the whistle on a situation this dangerous?

“Ladies and gentlemen, the defense has thrown a lot of engineering jargon at you. But I think we can agree it comes down to this: the job of shoring is to support the structures and the very earth around a construction site. To protect buildings, sidewalks, and roadways from being undermined and destroyed. Just as the job of a Department of Investigation Buildings Department investigator is to protect innocent people— protect them from corrupt and uncaring contractors! Dolan Construction’s shoring failed at its job. And Joe Cole failed at his.

“I submit to you that Mr. Cole wasn’t waiting for more evidence. Mr. Cole was waiting for different evidence. Evidence with which he could prove Larry Manelli was taking bribes from contractors without implicating this particular contractor. As we’ve shown, Mr. Cole had encountered Sonny O’Doul and Dolan Construction on three previous construction projects in the course of his work. I submit that Mr. Cole and Dolan Construction had a relationship, ladies and gentlemen. An arrangement!”

Pause for effect; the Manhattan DA had assigned an experienced and talented prosecutor to this high-profile case.

“And this arrangement, ladies and gentlemen, caused the death of little Ashley Moss.

“We ask you to consider carefully what you’ll be saying to the people of New York, and especially to the employees of your government— your city government— about what is and is not acceptable, when you render your verdict. Consider, as you deliberate, what message you’re sending.”

The jury returned in under two hours.

The message was sent.

*

“Go on, Joe, say it. You’re trying to start a new life, to put all this behind you.” Ann combed fingers through her wayward hair. “You remember what you said when Ellie talked about ‘starting over’?”

“Leave Ellie out of this.”

“You said it was bullshit.”

“It is. Ann, what do you want?”

“Help, Joe. I need help.”

He shook his head, drank his coffee. Look at that: Ann, asking him for help right here on his back porch. After all this.

“We had an accident,” she said.

In the way of speakers of arcane technical languages, he understood this to mean not that Ann and others had been involved in a mishap— say a car crash, or spilled soup— but that a construction accident had occurred on a site in which the Department of Investigation was taking an interest.

And that it must have been serious.

“A multi-use development in the Bronx,” she said. “Mott Haven Park. Heard of it?” She wasn’t asking if he’d heard of the neighborhood— of course he had, he’d grown up in New York— but of the project itself. She turned to him again; he noted this but stared steadily ahead.

“Huge,” she said, when he didn’t answer. “Two residential rental towers, commercial on the lower floors; between the towers, townhouses for sale. Both rentals and townhouses will go half at market rate, half affordable.” Affordable: such a New York euphemism. What wasn’t affordable, to someone? “A percentage of each type is reserved for current neighborhood residents. The developer’s called Three Star. The city gave them a few tax credits but no big concessions.”

“In Mott Haven? Things must have changed over there.” Joe was startled to hear himself. He didn’t care about Mott Haven, about the Bronx, about the city, not anymore. But talking with Ann, listening to a problem Ann brought him, was like hearing the opening drumbeats of a familiar though long unheard march; he fell into step automatically. And she would know that, she’d expect it. Angrily, he gulped his coffee and leaned forward over the rickety rail.

“It was starting to change before,” Ann said. “In the last two years, the pace sped up. A lot.”

Anyone else would have denied it, to be polite.

To deny, really, that he had missed the changes because he’d been away.

Away. Locked up. Held off to the side, voiceless and invisible.

When you were away, the world could change. Your wife could leave you, wars could start and end, development could come to Mott Haven.

“It’s changed a lot,” Ann repeated. She was not polite and denied nothing.

And he had never been invisible to her.

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

Ford Corrington looked over the paper in his hand for the hundredth time, then let it slide onto his desk. Taking his tea to the window, he stared down through the unruly foliage of potted plants.

In cars and buses, on foot, on bikes, standing on street corners and sitting on stoops, Harlem was going about its Sunday afternoon business. Directly below Ford’s window, laughing kids came and went through the Garden Project’s front doors. On the sidewalk three girls jumped rope in a complicated rhythm, and two boys pored over a comic book in the garden Ford and the kids had wrestled, years ago, from a rubble-strewn lot.

“You receiving, son?” Ford turned to see Ray Holdsclaw, hand on doorknob. Ray’s white hair and starched clerical collar framed his ebony-dark face.

“Sure, Ray. Come on in.”

“Missed you in church.”

“I know. You want some tea?”

“That? Son, where I come from, anything smelled like that, we fed it to the chickens.”

“It’s rooibos. From Botswana. African tea.”

“Then feed it to African chickens. Don’t suppose you have coffee?”

“Sorry.”

Ray settled into an armchair. Ford skirted his desk, stopping to pinch a brown leaf off a windowsill ivy. “I was up with Sarah Andersen,” he told Ray as he took the other armchair. “T. D. Tilden’s mother.”

Ray nodded. “Heard about that. The boy one of yours?”

“Once. Not for years now. When he was little, he’d come by for some basketball, woodshop. T.D. could draw and paint, we tried to reach him that way, but he never stayed. His girlfriend, Shamika Arthur, she came through some of our programs. Sweet kid. She works here now. You know her.”

“Of course. Her mama sings in our choir. Didn’t know Shamika was seeing the Tilden boy, though. How’s the girl taking it?”

“Haven’t seen her. Called, no answer. Thought she’d be at Sarah’s but I hear they don’t get along.” Ford stared into his tea. From downstairs soared the enthusiastic, if not skillful, voices of the children’s chorus. “Ray, we tried with T.D. He just slipped through.”

“Not your fault, son. You tried.”

“Doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Seventeen, and he’s gone. He had

a sweetness, a joy, when he was young. Big talk, big dreams. Even now, last time I saw him. Something the street hadn’t killed off yet.”

Ray waited a few moments, then asked, “Anyone say what happened?”

“He stank of weed, had a roach and some blunts in his pocket. Could have fallen. Cops are looking into it.”

Ray snorted and said nothing. They both knew how that would go.

“Edgar was there,” Ford said. “Showed up even before they got the boy in the ambulance.”